How to Transfer a Domain Name

Transferring a domain name means moving it from one registrar to another. The address stays exactly the same, your website keeps working, and your email keeps working. What changes is who you pay and who you log in to.

People usually do it for one of three reasons: the current provider is expensive, the current provider is unhelpful, or the domain is sitting in someone else’s account and they want it in their own. All three are worth doing, and none of them is as risky as it sounds, provided you do it in the right order.

Transfer, renewal and hosting are not the same thing

Worth separating these before you start, because mixing them up is how people break their own website.

A transfer on its own does not move your website. If you only want to change who bills you for the domain, you can transfer and change nothing else.

Before you start: five checks

Most failed transfers fail at this stage rather than later.

1. The domain is at least 60 days old and has not been transferred in the last 60 days. This is an industry rule for .com and similar, designed to prevent theft. There is no way round it, only waiting.
2. You can log in to the current registrar. If you cannot, sort that out first. This is the real work in most transfers.
3. The admin email on the domain is one you can read. Approval emails go there, and if it is an old address the transfer stalls.
4. The domain is not expired. Renew it first, then transfer. Trying to transfer a lapsed domain complicates both.
5. Note your current DNS settings. Take a screenshot of every record. This is the step people skip and regret.

How to transfer a .com, .net or .org

1. Unlock the domain at the current registrar. Look for a transfer lock or registrar lock setting and turn it off.
2. Turn off WHOIS privacy if it is on. Some registrars cannot read the contact details through it, which blocks the transfer.
3. Request the authorisation code, sometimes called an EPP code or auth code. It is usually emailed to the admin address.
4. Start the transfer at the new registrar and paste the code in. You will normally pay for a year at this point, and that year is added to your existing expiry rather than replacing it.
5. Approve the email. Both registrars usually send one. Approving speeds it up, ignoring it means waiting out the automatic period.
6. Wait. Typically five to seven days, sometimes faster if both sides approve promptly.

How to transfer a .co.uk

UK domains work differently and, in fairness, more simply. There is no authorisation code. Instead, the current registrar changes the domain’s IPS tag to that of the new registrar.

1. Open an account with the new provider and find out their IPS tag.
2. Ask your current registrar to change the IPS tag to that one. Many have a self service option for this.
3. The new provider picks the domain up, usually within minutes to a few hours.

Nominet, which runs .uk domains, holds the registration record itself, so the domain remains registered to you throughout. That is a genuine advantage of a .co.uk that nobody mentions when you buy one.

Will my website or email go down?

Not if you leave the DNS alone. A transfer changes the billing relationship, not where the domain points. The website and email keep working through it.

Where people get caught is that some registrars reset DNS records to their own defaults on transfer. That is why you screenshot the records first. If the site does drop, restoring those records fixes it, and the answer is usually visible within an hour.

The other thing worth knowing is that the “allow up to 24 hours” line you will be shown is mostly cover. When we pointed a Canterbury shop at its new site this summer, new visitors were seeing the new site within minutes. The owner was not, because his own phone still held the old address in memory, and he understandably assumed something had gone wrong. It had not. Registrars quote 24 hours because occasionally it is 24 hours and they would rather not field the messages. If your site looks unchanged to you an hour later, check it on mobile data or on somebody else’s phone before you panic.

• Do not transfer and change hosting on the same day. Do one, confirm it is fine, then do the other.
• Do not start a transfer the week of a big campaign.
• Do check your email is still arriving the day after.

What it costs

Transfers are usually cheap or free, and most registrars add a year to your registration as part of it, so you are effectively paying a normal renewal rather than a penalty.

What is not free is time. Budget an hour of your attention spread over a week, most of it spent getting into an account you have not logged into since 2019.

Getting a domain out of someone else’s account

This is the most common real world reason people search for this, and it is worth being direct about it.

If a previous designer or agency registered your domain in their own name, the registered owner is legally them, not you. Transferring it needs their cooperation. In practice most will help when asked plainly, particularly if the relationship ended reasonably.

What helps:

• Ask for the transfer in writing, politely and specifically. Name the domain and ask for the auth code or IPS tag change.
• Offer to settle anything genuinely outstanding first.
• Check your original contract. Many say the domain belongs to the client, which settles it quickly.
• If they will not engage, Nominet has a dispute process for .uk domains, and ICANN has one for .com. Both are slower than asking nicely.

Once it is yours, register it in your business name, put a real email on it, and turn on auto renew. Then check the other things in our website audit checklist, because a domain in the wrong name usually travels with a hosting login nobody has either.

After the transfer

• Confirm the site and email both still work.
• Check the expiry date carried across correctly.
• Turn on auto renew at the new registrar and check the card.
• Update the admin email to one you read. See domain name renewal for why this one matters more than it looks.
• Close the old account, or at least remove the payment card.

How we put this together

We move domains for clients as a routine part of putting a new site live, so this is written from doing it rather than from reading about it. Most of the awkward moments in the list above are ones we have actually hit: registrars that hide the nameserver settings behind a button in a different place from the one their own help page describes, accounts nobody has logged into for years, and admin email addresses pointing at a mailbox that no longer exists. The rule about not transferring and changing hosting on the same day is there because separating the two is the only way to know which one broke something.

If any of this sounds like something you would rather not do on a Friday afternoon, it is part of what a website maintenance plan covers. Tell us where your domain is and we will tell you what moving it involves, whether or not we end up doing it.